Edited by Dava Sobel For any liquid, there are two ways to arrive: condensation or melting, a gas finding shape or a solid losing it. For any liquid, leaving depends on pressures and one of two ways out: to evaporate is to lift from its own surface, the bonds broken, the substance cooling with each molecular departure; to boil is to reach the elemental point of no return, through and through. For a solid, there’s another trick to changing states by skipping the liquid in-between: the ablation of glaciers by wind that eats snow, the whiff of mothballs from the closet, arsenic like a hint of garlic in the air— or in reverse, frost or soot or rime, the coalescence of vapor, no longer suspended. The mind is said to do this, too: to turn one energy into another, like desire into art to save oneself in another state of being.
For any liquid, there are two ways to arrive: condensation or melting, a gas finding shape or a solid losing it. For any liquid, leaving depends on pressures and one of two ways out: to evaporate is to lift from its own surface, the bonds broken, the substance cooling with each molecular departure; to boil is to reach the elemental point of no return, through and through. For a solid, there’s another trick to changing states by skipping the liquid in-between: the ablation of glaciers by wind that eats snow, the whiff of mothballs from the closet, arsenic like a hint of garlic in the air— or in reverse, frost or soot or rime, the coalescence of vapor, no longer suspended. The mind is said to do this, too: to turn one energy into another, like desire into art to save oneself in another state of being.
